Magnum at the Movies

Photographers have been snapping images on film sets since the dawn of cinema. Often they are hired set photographers, whose work, explains the Italian film critic Alberto Barbera, is “limited mostly to documenting the work of a film, following the director’s work and often concerned only with satisfying the directives of the studio’s publicity departments, which need certain shots for promoting the film even before they finish making it.” But other photographers have taken the set itself as their subject, capturing not only the illusory world created by film but also the atmosphere of a production: a horse carried across a Texas ranch; the upturned face of Marilyn powdered through a car window.

A new show at the National Cinema Museum in Turin, which Barbera directs, showcases the movie work of Magnum photographers, who leaned heavily on friendships with the stars, he writes, “to create images that are often surprising, always original, and almost never what one would expect.” Here’s a look at “Magnum Sul Set.”

Marilyn Monroe in New York City, with director Billy Wilder in the background, during the filming of “The Seven Year Itch,” 1954. Photograph by Elliott Erwitt.